


Familiar

by warewananji



Category: Persona 4
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 01:49:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8231924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warewananji/pseuds/warewananji
Summary: You've come to love Souji Seta's eyes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is dark and meanders somewhere close to purple-prose, but sometimes you have words in your head and you just need to get them down somewhere.

You've come to love Souji Seta's eyes.

Even when they've caught you hiding in the tree outside his window in his house in the city and you nearly fall a good two meters to the ground, you find his eyes with your own, because it didn't take you long to realize that once you know Seta's eyes you know _him_ . His face expresses next to nothing and it's _infuriating_ because you never bothered to learn People, and if everyday people are hard enough to read already, Seta's like the final boss.

He comments that the birds have gotten bigger and redder this season, and you shout a string of swears at him since your cover's blown anyway, and you know his parents aren't home to catch you. He _laughs,_ a soft, short, breathy sort of laugh, one that sends blood rushing to your face and indignant rage boiling through your veins, but as you open your mouth to shout at him again he closes the window and leaves you alone to steam in your tree.

Eventually you climb down and head back to the tiny, cheap hotel you're staying in a few blocks away, and late in the night you think about his laugh—that soft, short, breathy laugh—and the way his eyes lit up like lightning across the clouds during a thunderstorm.

You both love and hate how it makes you feel.

* * *

You've come to love Souji Seta's hands.

They're pale and calloused (not as calloused as yours, of course) but watching him work in the kitchen is hypnotizing, because all you've ever known of his hands is their grip on his sword, when they were white-knuckled with desperation and determination in equal parts. In the kitchen they're relaxed, delicate even, and you watch the way he cuts a carrot into nearly perfect pieces, the way he uses it to put slices into a radish that make it look like one of the obnoxiously patterned ornaments you see around Christmas.

He flips over some sort of meat in a pan. The smell is drifting out of the cracked window, and it's only once it reaches your nose that you realize that you're fucking _starving_ and had been running on barely anything outside of your sheer rage at Seta's existence ever since you figured out where he was in the city. You hiss when your stomach growls loudly, because to your ears it sounds like a lion's roar, and you're worried it might be enough to give away your location in the bushes.

Thankfully, Seta doesn't appear to have heard you or your traitorous insides, and he sets the meat out on a cutting board and puts a few more artful slices into a few vegetables and tucks them into the bento he's working on.

He slices into the meat, and you watch his fingers as he lifts each piece and places it gently into the box on the counter. His hands might be big and calloused, but his fingers are long, and they handle each ingredient with grace you wouldn't expect from a swordsman like him. He pauses once everything's in place, and smiles to himself, but the way he smiles makes your chest feel weird in a way that's both unfamiliar and unpleasant. You pound on it once with a fist, because you don't really know any other way to make it fade, but it's weird and persistent and you don't really know what to do about it besides sit there and hope it isn't permanent.

But luck must be on your side, because he sets the bento on the counter, which happens to be right next to the open window. He sighs, and turns away, starting to remove his apron as he leaves the kitchen, presumably to sit down or go take a piss or something—but it doesn't matter, because he's an idiot and you can't wait to both rub it in his face and get something in your stomach.

As his footsteps fade you rush forward, snatching the box out of the window (the moron was dumb enough to leave chopsticks within arm's reach, too) and you retreat back to the bushes with your ill-gotten gains.

Once you pop the lid you can't help but stare, because you might not know or care much about what art looks like, but you're pretty sure this is something like it. Each portion of the bento is arranged meticulously, and the colors pop in a way that's beautiful and floods your mouth with drool.

For once, you eat slowly, carefully, savoring each piece of your stolen meal. It's like nothing you've ever eaten, because you usually settle for something cheap and easy from a local convenience store, something that takes no time and usually only boiling water or a microwave, because who the hell has time to learn to cook when you've got espionage to do? But Seta's food is delicious, and even with the resentment toward him still burning brightly in your heart, your stomach is more sated than it's been in years.

He returns to the kitchen a few minutes after you've practically licked the box clean, glancing at the spot where the bento had been. You wait, eagerly, like a cat watching a mouse, expecting a look of surprise, confusion, disappointment...

But your luck's run out, because he gives you the satisfaction of none of those things, and instead smiles very faintly and glances out the window, a glimmer of amusement flashing across his eyes as he focuses right on the bush where you're hiding, and you feel that all-too-familiar rage boil up in you again. You can't help it. You stand up, throwing the box and the chopsticks to the ground with a clatter, and curses and death threats of a hundred thousand different colors spill from your mouth.

He seems unphased by your tirade, and that pisses you off the most, and were it not for the sound of his neighbor's back door sliding open as you reached for your swords, you might've killed him then and there. But even as your jaw snaps shut against its will and you hear Seta reassuring the neighbors that no, everything's fine, he just had the television turned up too loudly, you notice that he's got his sword gripped in one calloused hand at his side, his thumb pressed up against the guard. He'd been expecting you in more ways than one, and for some reason that calms some of the storm raging in your heart.

You leave the empty bento and chopsticks in the window, and the next day he again fills up the box with his calloused, beautiful hands, and leaves it within your arm's reach.

* * *

You've come to love Souji Seta's voice.

It didn't take you long to realize that his parents are hardly ever home, so Seta's voice is a rare thing, and even when he does speak, it's usually infuriatingly gentle and soft. Even when his parents _are_ home he speaks very little: a greeting when they walk in the door, asking them how their day was, giving them a report on how school is going, and a mention of what he's made for dinner. Of course, that's assuming they actually come home when he's still awake, which happens maybe once a week. You've also noticed that sometimes, even if Seta's still up and working on homework or reading in his room, when his parents come in he'll get up, turn off his lights, and pretend to be asleep.

You wonder why, because from what you've seen of the neighbors and most other families, children usually can't get enough of their parents. Even shitty little toddlers throwing temper tantrums eventually reach for their mothers, crying pathetically until they've worn themselves out. So Seta's family makes no sense, and you can't wrap your head around it; it doesn't seem to you like he particularly hates his parents, and his parents don't appear to hold any kind of animosity toward him, but somehow it seems to you like they may as well be three strangers who happen to be living together. It's a puzzle, but to you, very little about Seta makes sense already, so you chalk it up to his strangeness and try not to dwell on it, because why the fuck should you care, anyway?

(It only occurs to you later, in your shitty little motel room, that even _Ikutsuki_ usually faked affection better than Seta's parents do.)

So Seta's voice is rare, and rarer still is any real emotion behind it. He speaks to his parents politely but not particularly warmly, and it's only the occasional phone call he gets from one of his stupid friends in Inaba that you ever hear any feeling in his tone. With his phone pressed to his ear, he smiles more, he laughs easily, and he curls up on the loveseat in his room and spends hours talking about who-fucking-cares-what to whoever's on the other end.

Stalking Seta like this has started to get you accustomed to a feeling of indescribable tightness in your chest, but it always seems like it's the worst when you watch him on the phone. Every smile, every laugh, every affectionate response he gives makes it feel more and more like there's a snake constricting around your heart and your lungs, and makes it hard to breathe or think or focus on anything but Seta, bathed in the light of his room as he laughs at some story that stupid bear tells him, or nods along with sympathy to some grievance the airheaded red-sweater girl has about her job, or gives his rapt attention to details about a case from the stubborn detective boy-girl-whatever.

But everything about Seta changes when Hanamura calls, and nothing pisses you off more.

When Hanamura calls, Seta's eyes light up the moment he checks the caller ID on his phone. He smiles when he says hello, and usually doesn't stop until the call's over, usually hours upon hours later. But strangely, the tightness in your chest is at its worst for the minute after he hangs up, because Seta usually sighs, and spends a few moments staring at his phone, looking troubled and withdrawn.

It makes no sense. Isn't Hanamura supposed to be his best friend? Shouldn't he be all happy and shit? Or, you wonder, is he just disappointed that their stupid phone call didn't last any longer?

Once, Seta does something that confuses you more than anything else he's done so far. He hangs up with Hanamura, looks at his phone for a while, and then sets it aside, settles down on his couch, and then...

Closes his goddamn curtains? What the fuck?

You're almost insulted by that, because even if it's a weird open-book secret that you're out here, he's never bothered to close his curtains before. Normally you're privy to everything he does in his room at night, but for tonight, for some reason...

You only realize he didn't bother closing the window itself once you've crept closer, precariously balancing on a branch, and you hear the sound of him _breathing_.

No, you realize, that's not just him breathing. It's too loud for that, too high-pitched, too desperate in a way that's suddenly making you realize that your pants are too tight and there's a warmth coiling at the pit of your stomach that isn't the rage you're so accustomed to normally feeling there. It's happened before, this feeling, but normally it's either out of nowhere, or after a particularly good training session, and the quickest way you've found to make it go away is...

There's a faint, slick sound coming from Seta's room, and after a second, you recognize it. You've done the same thing, when waiting for your problem to go away didn't work, or when it was too much to bear. A breeze blows, and the curtains shift, and through a small crack between them you can see Seta sitting on the loveseat in his room, his head tilted over the back of it, his face and his lap in full view. His eyes are closed and his lips are moving, and he's murmuring something between breaths that you can't hear, and you watch his bangs slip off his forehead, and for some fucking goddamn reason it's not the thumb running circles over the head of his dick that makes your pants tighter, it's the little furrow of concentration you can see between his eyebrows.

You want to tear your eyes away—not to give him any privacy, mind—but because you're not sure what this feeling is or why Seta, of all people, is _causing_ it. You want it to go away, you want to sit in the night breeze until it fades, or run back to your shitty motel room so you can dunk your head in cold water until your senses come back to you, but Seta picks that second to arch a little bit off his seat, throw his head back, and _moan_ in a way that sends an inexplicable shudder down your spine. You reach down, irritated, and tug at the crotch of your pants, but the heel of your hand brushes it first and you swear under your breath at the same time your hips jolt.

This is the worst fucking night of your life, and it's all Seta's fault.

You don't know or care much about sex or sexuality, it's all a weird, confusing mess from what you can tell, but you know enough to recognize that a hand on your dick feels fuckin' _good_ (if not also strange and vulnerable in a way you only sort of hate) and you're about to give up and go back to your motel to sort yourself out when Seta suddenly stops with a soft little half-gasp, and reaches for something. You're transfixed, even if your mind is screaming at you to stop, to run, to get away from here and all these things that Seta makes you _feel_ , and you watch as he smears something all over a flesh-colored _thing_ (oh god, what the fuck, is that a fake _dick?!_ ) and then spreads his legs and...

And...

The noise he makes as he slides it inside himself is nothing you will _ever_ be able to get out of your goddamn head, it sounds nearly inhuman because it's nothing like you'd ever imagined him sounding like, it's desperate and uncomfortably _loud_ and god, what the fuck, you should have left the second he closed the fucking curtains, but you can't move because Seta's using that goddamn _thing_ to fuck himself, and your pants have never felt tighter and you've never hated him more than in his moment, and you're pretty sure you could never possibly hate him more, until both his hands speed up and he gasps, “Yosuke...!”

Your blood runs ice-cold, like it's frozen inside your veins, like your heart's stopped beating. All the breath leaves your lungs at once, like you've fallen out of the tree, but you're still there, sitting on the branch, and suddenly you look down and realize that Seta's eyes—those stupid, beautiful goddamn eyes that you love and hate so much—are _open_ , and he's looking right at you through the crack in the curtains, and he knows, he knows you've fucking sat there and watched him and heard every slick stroke of his hand, every panting breath, every moan, and his stare goes wide as all this settles in on him, and you've never gotten down from that tree faster.

Back in the motel room, you crank the air conditioning up, freezing the room as quickly as possible, and you all but run to the bathroom because surely, an icy shower is all you need to make all this go away. You've got to clear your head, because it's full of Seta, it's full of his eyes and his hands and his voice gasping his best friend's stupid fucking _name_ , and it's only after a dull pain starts settling into your hand that you realize you've punched the tile wall of the shower for some reason.

But by far the worst and most humiliating thing of all is that the shower doesn't do its _goddamn job,_ and as you lay in bed in your freezing, shitty motel room, you shove your hand between your legs and imagine your hands around Seta's pale, pretty throat, and your fist moves faster. You think of those calloused hands—the ones that can both hold a sword and meticulously arrange a beautiful bento—scrabbling against your wrists. You think of those stormy grey eyes that have tormented you for so long, wide and desperate, silently begging for mercy, and your hips jolt up into your hand as you press your thumb into the slit on the head of your dick. You think of how his body would feel beneath you, thrashing and arching as he struggled to no avail, his lips open and blue, struggling for breath as he bled out under you.

It's only once you're too far gone to stop that your brain replaces that stupid fake dick with yours, and even if your hands are still around his throat, you wonder what it's like inside him, how different it is than a hand (or that weird egg thing you'd gotten out of a vending machine and tried once), and whether or not he'd tighten up around you as your grip tightened around his trachea. You think of the way his eyes would roll up into his head, the way he'd be torn between his weird breathy moans and trying to get you to let go of his neck. The way he'd arch into you, the way you'd let go of him as you and he both came and he'd gasp out _your_ name instead of Hanamura's—

Wait, what the _fuck_?!

You snarl in frustration even as your hips jolt and you make a mess all over your hand, and after angrily swiping your hand and stomach off with a tissue, you curl up into a ball on your side, tangling your fingers in your own hair. None of this makes any sense, and your mind is a jumble of rage and _Seta,_ always Seta, because you weren't smart enough to just pick a fight with him the second he was alone, and instead had to spend time _watching_ him long enough to find out he wanted his best friend to fuck him in the ass, and for some reason that makes you _angrier_.

It's a long night, but you're exhausted, and going to bed angry is nothing new to you.

* * *

You've come to hate Souji Seta's eyes.

It actually takes you a day to go back to his house, and settle in your usual spot in the tree, but you're sullen and still holding onto residual bitterness like it's a life raft in the ocean, because it's the only thing you know and more importantly, it's the only thing that keeps your mind from wandering places it shouldn't. You've done your damnedest to forget the events of a few nights ago, and so far, being angry at Seta and every stupid Seta thing he does has been working out well in that regard.

It's getting difficult today, though, because he's back on the phone with Hanamura, and it's taking all your willpower to not just leave. But you tell yourself you need to keep watching him, because how else are you going to figure out all his weaknesses so you can fight and kill him for good? So you stay, and you ignore the way Seta's smile reaches his eyes, the way his voice is soft and sweet, the way he laughs whenever Hanamura tells him what's inevitably some stupid fucking joke.

You're much funnier, in your expert opinion.

But today is weird, because he hangs up with Hanamura and ritualistically stares at his phone for his usual minute or two, and then Seta surprises you. He tosses his phone onto his desk, uncharacteristically careless, and moves to the window closest to your stakeout tree, and opens it.

“Hey,” he speaks into the darkness, “I know you're up there, Sho.”

It's the first time he's ever said your name like that—soft, gentle, nothing like the way he talked to you a few months ago—and the shiver it sends down your spine surprises and annoys you. You hesitate, torn between wanting to feign ignorance and wanting to respond with something harsh, something curt, something that makes your hatred and resentment and arrogance toward him clear, maybe some crude joke about the other night that would humiliate him—

“Do you want to come inside?” Seta asks, interrupting your inner turmoil, and you pick up something hiding in his seemingly-even tone, something that you feel like you recognize, something familiar, but also something you want to forget. “My parents won't be back tonight.”

So a few minutes later you're standing in the middle of your worst enemy's bedroom, unsure of what to do or say, trying not to look at that fucking loveseat, and while half of you wants to grab your swords and cut his fucking goddamn head off, you've spent so much time staring at Seta now that you know it's weird that he won't meet your eyes and seems distracted and inattentive despite having you—full of hatred and spite for him—standing a few feet away, easily within a blade's reach. He opens his mouth a few times, words on the tip of his tongue, but he falters each time, and finally he turns and looks at you, and there's a rawness in his expression that startles you so much that you take an involuntary step back.

“I...” he begins, uncharacteristically awkward, “I'm not sure why I invited you in here.” He admits it slowly and unsteadily, and the honesty unsettles you deeply, and you almost wish _he_ would take up the sword leaning against the corner and swing at you, so that you wouldn't be at such a loss. If it's unlike Seta to be unable to talk, it's triply unlike you, but when you fight to find something to say, you come up with almost nothing.

“W-Well,” you splutter, hating him for making your face heat up and your palms sweat, “how the fuck am I supposed to know that?! I'm... I'm not some goddamn mind reader!”

The anger feels good, familiar in a comforting sort of way, because once you were smart enough to move beyond sadness, anger was the only thing you ever really knew. It's warm and something you're used to, settling into the pit of your stomach and overtaking the discomfort of an unfamiliar situation you never in a million years would have ever imagined yourself in.

It's quick to leave, though, because Seta looks away again, grimaces, and says, “I know. I'm sorry. You can go if you want.”

For a few seconds you're stunned back into silence, but then a different kind of rage boils up in you. Seta's not supposed to be like this, he's not supposed to be meek and soft and _unsure_ , because he's always sure about _everything_ , and that's how things are supposed to be. Seta's supposed to be all-knowing and it's supposed to piss you the fuck off, but when he's here in front of you and he has no idea what to say, you don't have a reason to be mad, but that in itself is enough to annoy the ever-loving _shit_ out of you.

So you stop thinking, and you step forward, and you grab Seta by the front of his shirt and haul him up, slamming him against the wall. He gasps, and the way his body writhes against yours as you lift him off the floor reminds you uncomfortably of the scenes that played out in your head last night. He even grasps at your wrists in the way that you imagined, even if your fingers aren't around his throat.

“Sho...” he says, warningly, but it's not enough to stop you, and somehow, you realize that he knows that. So you lean forward, getting close enough to see the small black dots in his cloudy grey eyes, close enough to know that it's not fear that he's feeling, close enough to hear the way his breath quickens as yours brushes his skin. You have no fucking idea what it is you're doing, and yet you open your mouth and bite at his neck—not as hard as you want to, because there's a voice in the back of your mind that wants you to sink your teeth in until you draw blood—but you're not gentle, either, and the way he twitches and gasps sends warmth rushing between your legs.

You drag your teeth across his skin, able to faintly taste salty sweat, and he _groans_ , his fingers tightening around your wrist. He's not struggling anymore, you notice, and so you bite down a little harder. He whimpers. A little more, and he starts scrabbling against your wrists, trying to push you away with his knees. Better. A victory isn't nearly as sweet when you haven't fought for it a little, after all.

“S-Stop!” Seta snaps, and you grin wickedly against his jugular. You don't know much about what you're doing, but you've seen it a handful of times on TV, and so you stop biting down and instead suck hard on the spot between his neck and shoulder. Seta's cries change tone, and suddenly his hands are on your shoulders, his nails digging in, and he's curling in on himself a little like cooked shrimp. But he's not a small guy, and even as strong as you are, holding him against the wall like this isn't working, so you tighten your grip on him and pull him away from the wall, throwing him none-too-gently onto his stomach on the floor. He grunts as the air leaves his lungs, and you pin him there, twisting one arm up behind his back. He's protesting again, but you're a little bigger than he is, and he freezes up when you move a hand around and down and find him just as hard as you are.

“Somethin' you wanna share with the class?” You sneer, pleased with the way color floods his pale cheeks, the way he splutters but can't seem to find something coherent to say.

“Get _off_ me,” he hisses instead, and a laugh bubbles up in your throat.

“I'm _tryin'_ ,” you snicker, “if you'd just hold still for one goddamn second. Have you been paying _any_ attention?”

“Wh—” Seta starts to reply, but it breaks off into a beautiful cry of pain as you tug on his wrist.

What was it that dumbass green-jacketed chick always said? “Don't think, feel?”

You're starting to think that maybe that's some good advice, after all.

* * *

You've come to love Souji Seta's eyes.

Sometimes he'll look at you right before he comes, and his eyes are perfect. They're cloudy, desperate, almost pained, and you don't even need you be choking him out to get them that way. His entire body tenses against yours, and if you're fucking him on his back, he'll press his calves and heels into your shoulders as his spine arches up. Once, he came so hard he made a mess all the way up on his own chest, and you got to laugh at him for an hour afterward about it.

The constant swell of anger in your gut has lessened over the past few weeks, but strangely, you don't really miss it. There's a feeling of power you get from being able to hold Seta down and fuck him until his voice runs raw, his calloused hands having dug into your shoulders hard enough to bruise. Sometimes he'll indulge you by struggling, and the best time by far was when you managed to sneak into his window after he'd fallen asleep, only to wake up with a jolt and a muffled cry as you'd climbed over him in the pitch darkness and pressed your hand over his mouth. Another time, he'd made the mistake of showing you that mouths felt pretty good on dicks, too, and so once, impatient and horny, you'd forced him to his knees, held onto his hair, and fucked his mouth until he nearly gagged. (You'd threatened to cut his tongue out if he threw up on you, and the look in his eyes had nearly been enough to do you in right then and there.)

Souji—no, _Seta_ continues to have weird habits that confuse you, like the one night he grasped your arm to keep you from leaving after you were both done, and muttered something sleepily about how his parents weren't going to be home until tomorrow night, and you'd spent an extremely awkward night lying on his futon, with him curled against your side. That had been confusing to the point of irritation, and you'd made him pay for it by rolling over onto him first thing the next morning.

You've all but forgotten why you originally started watching him. It's in the back of your head, somewhere, but it's drowned out by Seta's eyes, his smile, his hands, his voice... They're all that fill your thoughts, now, and sometimes you wonder about that, if you should make it go away somehow, but then Seta does something like hand you a plate of his home-cooked food and you stop wondering for a while longer.

But then, one day, he gets a call from Hanamura while you're lounging in his room, looking idly through one of his comic books and asking him occasionally what a certain kanji is. He apologizes in his soft voice, and steps out into the hallway to answer the call, and you can't make out what he's saying but it's gentle and amused like it always is whenever he's on the phone with Hanamura. Familiar irritation bubbles up inside you again, but you quash it, because you tell yourself that you've still won, somehow, even if you don't know how or _what_ you've won. You just have.

You hear Seta snap his phone shut and wait for him to come back inside, but the hallway is silent for a solid thirty seconds or so before you hear him sigh and he opens the door again.

That brings up a new, different kind of annoyance. You open your mouth to say something, but before you can, he's walked up to you, setting his phone on the coffee table before straddling your lap and wrapping his arms around your neck. You stare, but he says nothing, tangling his fingers into the hair at your nape and starting to nibble and suck at the side of your throat. Your body's used to this by now and you shudder in response, and you grasp his waist and roll you both over until you're on top of him, and start biting at his earlobe and jaw. He whimpers, his grip on your shoulders tightening, and you're both so used to this by now that it's not long before you're slicked up and inside him.

He feels good, like he always does, but there's something strange about today, something you can't put your finger on. He won't look at you as much as usual, and he's quieter, but somehow even more desperate in the way he presses his hips up and against you, the way his fingers pull you closer.

“Harder,” he whispers, and you oblige him, but he still won't cry out the way he usually does. You know what it is he likes and you're giving it to him, and frustration is building as he refuses to give you what he knows you want in return. You want his voice, his hands, his eyes, and he _knows that_ , but none of those things are right today, and you don't know why.

You don't know why, until at one point you look up at his face, and you see his eyes flickering toward his phone on the table, and your entire world comes crashing down around you as you finally realize why it really is you're here.

_You've never been anything more than a replacement._

A substitute.

A stand-in.

The rage that boils in the pit of your stomach isn't boiling hot this time, it's ice fucking _cold_ , and the only other time you can remember feeling anything like it was waking up and realizing that somehow, Minazuki had been taken from you.

There's a period of horrifying self-awareness as the thought crosses your mind that _Seta_ isn't the only one probably looking for a replacement, and when you look at his eyes and he finally looks back at you, his expression is momentarily stoic while he tries to consider what he _should_ be looking like, and it's so familiar it feels like a punch in the gut. He may have never been able to _see_ Minazuki, but the expression that Seta's wearing makes your stomach twist sharply, painfully, and your eyes are burning so suddenly that it's sending you into a panic.

For once, Seta doesn't notice.

For once, all-knowing, all-perfect Seta fucks up at just the wrong time.

As you're trying to put your thoughts back into order, blink away the burning in your eyes, and calm the sinking feeling in your heart, Seta's mind visibly wanders again, and he glances back at his phone.

You might not be a mind-reader, but you don't need to be to know exactly what's going on in his head. All you've ever had to do is look at his eyes.

The rage in you rises, and you give up trying to stop the burning in your eyes, and there's an unfamiliar-yet-familiar dampness on your face, one you haven't known for years, but you write it off as rain from the storm swirling in your chest. Seta's finally noticed, and his eyes go wide as he looks at you face.

“Sho...?”

The scream that tears from you is inhuman, monstrous,

(one that you feel like you've heard once before, echoing off metal-plated walls, accompanied by the shrieks of shadow suppression weapons as you tore them to shreds)

but your mind is racing faster than you can keep up, and the idea that you've never been anything but a fucking _replacement_ —

(how was what you were doing any different?)

—is like a sword to the chest, only worse, because you've _had_ a sword to the chest and this is even more unbearable, somehow. You can't think straight, you only know rage and betrayal, and even if the pain is tearing you apart, those feelings are, at least,

(the only two things you've ever really known)

_familiar._

Your hands close around his throat.

* * *

You've come to love Souji Seta's eyes,

but,

more than anything,

you hate seeing them on anyone else.


End file.
